


Eddie Kaspbrak goes for a run

by podcastalien



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Character Study, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gen, idk just take it if u want it, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 11:23:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15840267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/podcastalien/pseuds/podcastalien
Summary: Eddie’s been delicate his whole life until he decides not to be





	Eddie Kaspbrak goes for a run

****

It started one hot night while his mom was asleep and the house was quiet.

 

He was sitting at his desk, doodling. Bill said it always helped him calm down to draw.

 

Bill, with his steady hands and gentle eyes and patience. He’d seen how Bill manipulated the lines and colors and space on the page to work in perfect harmony. He would softly run over his master pieces with a wet brush soaked in pigment and wait as long as it took for the piece to dry. He would wait forever if need be. If he didn’t get what he wanted the first time; he would erase and start over until he got what he wanted to see onto the paper. He would wait an eternity and try a million times if it meant an end he could be satisfied with. 

 

Bill had the courage to pour his heart into something, wholly and completely. So easily inspired and so good at finding beauty. 

 

But Eddie’s hands moved too fast, he would erase too harshly and the paper would rip. More pressing than that, he didn’t even know what he wanted draw. He racked his brain for something, anything. 

 

He led the pencil along the piece of yellowish sketch paper; maybe something would manifest itself, he had a lot on his mind. 

 

But each time, it just ended up an unfocused array of scribbles and he only felt more frustrated. 

 

He attempted to draw a person but he couldn’t get the proportions quite right. He ended up pulling his hair in anger, _this was supposed to be relaxing damnit._

 

He tried drawing a bird, simple enough. Stanley had given him a photo of one that  he kept on the wall the desk faced. Eddie remembered he came to the quarry one day with the picture in his hand and gave it to him. He had written, “Scarlet tanager” on the little white space below the image in his signature crisp handwriting.

 

Stan handed it to Eddie and simply said, “it reminded me of you.” 

 

The bird was sitting atop a branch, peering at something. It had a orangish-red body and black wings with sharp, beady eyes, it’s head was tilted a little to the side. Eddie didn’t know if he was supposed to be flattered or offended by the association. 

 

He started with an eye, a little oval in the center of the page. He erased and erased until he got the perfect shape and then moved to sketch the head; trying and erasing and perfecting. The beak was a little more simple, Eddie had admired the silvery color of it. It was actually starting to become  calming. 

 

But then he couldn’t get the rest of the picture quite right. The body was smaller, and then bigger than the head. The feathers didn’t look realistic. He couldn’t get any of it right. Maybe all of this wouldn’t have bothered him so much if if were another time, but now it felt just like everything else. Out of his control. 

 

He erased angrily, once again ripping the thin sheet of paper. The tear spilt the bird’s eye, possibly the one thing Eddie was proud of; his good start. He dropped the pencil, stood up and shoved all of the art supplies onto the floor with a loud crash. If his mom woke up, his mom woke up. 

 

But she didn’t. In a moment of weakness, Eddie wished she would’ve. To have her come in and ask if he was alright, to hug him gently after the initial scolding. He would cry in her arms and tell her everything, and she would say that it was all okay. All of it. 

 

Then of course, he came to his senses and realized what his mother would actually say if she if she found him up at this hour. She’d yell at him, list of all the reasons it was bad for his health, remind him of how “delicate” he was. Then she’d hug him, abrasive and hard, like he would float away if she didn’t hold him tight enough. Maybe he would have.

 

People would always say it came from a place of love. He thought it did for a long time. 

 

But it’s like Ben said once while looking down at his shoes, “People who love you want what’s best for you, even if it’s not what’s best for them.” 

 

This wasn’t what was best for him. It wasn’t best for him to feel like the walls were always caving in on him, or like he’d die if he even so much as shook hands with people. It wasn’t best for him to be trapped in here. It wasn’t best for him to be afraid of who he was becoming. It wasn’t best for him to always feel like he was in a car someone else was driving, speeding down the road while he sat paralyzed and stagnant.  

 

He stood at his desk, a little lamp lighting the room, tinting the space around him a soft yellow. He hadn’t noticed the tears running down his cheeks until he saw his reflection in the window. 

 

Something seemed very attractive to him now about not being in his house.

 

He padded gently down the stairs, pulled on his gym shoes, and went out the front door. 

 

He wiped his cheeks and sniffled, “stupid fucking bird.” 

 

It’s a pretty clear night. The moon is a bright crescent shape in the sky and the stars are sprinkled across the rich darkness. Eddie takes a moment to admire it and then starts to walk. 

 

Eddie was of course aware of the risks of being out alone at night. How could he not be? He was encouraged to be afraid of the dark. To crawl to his mother in fear. Anything unknown and not fully understood was dangerous.

 

So he decides to get familiar. 

 

He doesn’t really know where he’s going;  where ever his feet decided, he supposed.  

 

He passes houses and cars and trees and street lights. He breathes in the cool air and felt it gently graze his tired skin.

 

He peers briefly into the windows of houses with lights still on, or lights flickering from a tv, and sees baggy eyed residents of his home town. 

 

He sees houses with all of the lights off and thinks briefly about all of the sleeping people in them, maybe wrapped in warm blankets or maybe beside someone they may love. 

 

He felt a longing twinge for the warmth of sleep but he was no less lucid and awake then he had been all day; more so even.

 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking, but in he’d some how come back home. 

 

_No,_ he thought, _not my home, just my house._

Eddie peered at the red brick structure that was painted black by the night sky. The vines that hung from the outside walls were dark, stringy shapes that looked like the vile and invasive appendages of some great creature. Eddie thought if he dug with his jagged edged nails into one of them, ( _he had picked up nervously bitting, a habit that disgusted him when others did so,)_ he would not findthatsunny greenish yellowgel that gave life to the plants, ( _and by extension, all things_ ) but an oozing black bile. The vines would tighten and constrain him, almost tight enough to chop him to pieces, but not quite. _It had other work to do:_ the bile would burst from the plant and spill down his arms, through his shirt and down into his pants and legs, and _oh how it would burn._

It would scorch his pale skin into bubbles, it would seep into his cuts and intrude upon his frail inner self. It would eat and burn his blood like a snake’s fangs bitting into an unsuspecting mouse, like it was hungry.

 

He would try to scream, he would try, but upon opening his mouth, his jaw would unhinge monsterishly and unleash a cascade of thick toxic ooze, as it burned the insides of his pink mouth. 

 

He shook his head, trying to physically evaporate the thought from his mind,

 

_No,_ he thought again, _vines are just vines, they grow, but they do not harm, they never have._

_So what are you so afraid of?_

A far off voice asked, 

 

The voice spoke not from an a alley, or a from under a street lamp (or from a sewer drain), but from his own mind. 

 

The voice said something profound then, 

 

_Nature is after all,_ the voice saidand then it seemed to pause, _natural._  

 

The words rang in his head like a bell, 

 

He looked up at his _house_ again, windows like glassy eyes and thought about his sleeping mother. Sonia Kaspbrak, who had bore and raised him. Who had taught him everything he knew. 

 

_Every tremble,_

 

_Every squeak in his voice,_

_Every crease around his eye that had formed after closing them tightly in fear_ _,_

_Every moment of hesitation,_

_Every heave in his chest,_

 

Every trance of doubt fed to him in the form of sugar pills. 

 

_He owed it all to her._

He remembered what she had told him when he was too young and impressionable to find anything irrational about what she was saying: 

 

_He couldn’t play rough,_

_He couldn’t even play with other kids,_

 

_Not in the way kids naturally did,_

_Couldn’t hug or even touch hands_ _with them,_

_He couldn’t play on the monkey bars or the jungle gym,_

_He couldn’t walk anywhere alone,_

_Not even down the street_

_Couldn’t leave the house without a jacket on the hottest day,_

 

_Couldn’t go anywhere without his aspirator,_

_Couldn’t run,_

_That one made his blood boil._

 

His mind drifted to a memerory that should’ve been caked over by time now, but it wasn’t, he saw with perfect clarity, 

 

_Mrs. Kaspbrak, Eddie appears perfectly healthy and seems to enjoy gym clas_ s.

 

He watched and heard from the window, the voice of his 3rd grade P.E. teacher. 

 

And then the voice of his delirious mother shrieking back at him, 

 

_He’s delicate!_

 

 

The echo of the bell rang in the back of his mind, flowing all the way down his body until it reached his feet.  

 

_Delicate_  

 

He felt anger that had always sat as an undercurrent gather at the surface. 

 

_Delicate_  

 

His jagged nails pushed into the inside skin of his palm and the force which he commanded was nearly enough to draw blood.

 

The anger flowed through him and found a home in his feet as he now couldn’t seem to sit still. He scuffed one foot after the next on the pavement for several minutes before finding his instincts, covered over and caked by fear. 

 

He felt it in his blood and for the first time, Eddie Kaspbrak did not try to bury his physical intuition. 

 

It was an instinct to take the anger and propel it, to move it somewhere, to follow it even, 

 

_To run._

And that’s just what he did. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know this isn’t really reddie or my usual style but I love Eddie and I wrote this in the Boston airport like a month ago on my way home from Maine and I was feeling nostalgic for that today. Tumblr- coffeekaspbrak


End file.
